Editor's Note
The 2026 Tremont Writers Conference in Townsend, Tennessee, is scheduled for October 21-25, and the faculty lineup this year includes Ron Rash, Kelli Jo Ford, Crystal Wilkinson, and Linda Parsons. Applications are open through May 15.
Blair, a nonprofit press based in North Carolina, recently announced that it would be reviving the New Stories from the South series, formerly published by Algonquin. They’re accepting short story nominations from editors of journals, magazines, collections, and anthologies through March 15. Full details and guidelines are available here.
Today at the site, Sean Kinch reviews a new novel from W.M. Akers, To Kill a Cook. There’s a gruesome murder at the center of the story, but Sean notes that the book is “replete with food” and should be read “with snacks on hand.” In her review of George Saunders’ Vigil, Sara Beth West writes that the novel — a story of spirits ushering an oil company CEO into the afterlife — has “a simplicity that needles and provokes, which means it’s not simple at all.” And in a review from the Chapter 16 archive, Emily Choate describes Maria Zoccola’s Hele
News Roundup
- Joy Harjo will deliver the 2026 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture on February 26 at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville campus. The event is free and open to the public.
- The first Friends Book Ball, a fundraiser for Knox County Public Library programs, will be held on February 21.
- Percival Everett was the bestselling Black author of 2025, according to the African American Literature Book Club.
- A story by George Singleton was published in Cutleaf.
- Two poems by Linda Parsons were published in Salvation South.
